Tuesday, August 11, 2009

More disgraceful stuff

MPs are rorting the general public. Well there's a surprise. There has been a lot of this in the last ten days or so. The wheezes some of them come up with are nothing if not enterprising. Have a house in Wellington, sell it to a trust, rent it out, move to Wellington (that you are already there can be glossed over) and move into another house in Wellington which the taxpayers pays for. Good trick. I'm sure the bits that the taxpayer isn't paying is tax deductible or something. I'm hopeless with money - Mrs O's department. I open my wallet and if there is a bit of dosh in there all good; if there is not I don't have a cup of coffee. Pretty simple.

All this housing rorting is one thing but the travel is on a different level of deviousness. There ain't none. They just front up at a taxi rank, airport or flash hotel and spend our money like drunken sailors. The numbers these jokers run up are staggering. Cabinet approved trips by ministers that run into six figures in half a year. People like the foreign minister have to travel a bit, you know to foreign type places and the like, but Chris Carter (and we'll be seeing more of him in a minute) managed $200,000 in six months as education minister. Justification for this? He was encouraging foreign students to fill their boots at New Zealand's halls of learning. If I were a spotty youth sitting in Kuala Lumpur wondering where to spend the next three years or so and Chris Carter hove into view I'd be off to Canada like a shot.

Now it would appear that bloody Carter has failed to notice that his mob lost the last General Election and that he is no longer a Minister of the Crown. Isn't it reassuring that the last Minister of Education is such a slow learner. So our Chris and his bloke type wife (and I'm sorry to report that has nothing to do with all this) has been swanning around the globe to the tune of $57,000 in the first six months of this year. That is $313.19 a day. Every day. $313.19 a day if he is working (sic) in Wellington or Te Atatu. $313.19 a day if he is baled up in bed with swine flu - a very appropriate ailment for one whose nose is buried so deeply in the public trough. $313.19 a day if he is digging the garden. $313.19 a day if he is picking his nose. $313.19 a day if he is reading the newspaper. $313.19 a day whatever the damned man is doing. I defy any one to spend $313.19 a day every day for six months. It would be easy enough for a week or two but you'd start running out of ideas pretty sharpish. I mean how many elephant foot umbrella stands do you need?

How can you justify this profligate spending of my money? Well, of course, you can't. But the Speaker, of all people, has a go. A job as an MP is a wrecker of family life as poor MP has to be away from the family home so often. Well so does the travelling salesman of vacuum cleaners. Does Harvey Norman fund trips away for the wife of the man in in the car coat and Hush Puppies? Does Air New Zealand make sure wifey is always sitting in First Class as Capt. Bloggs flies to Burkina Faso for the fourth time this month? Of course not. No private company would stand for such nonsense. Back to Chris carter - if we must. If no one in their right mind would want to meet him when he was a Minister what possible reason can any one have now? Who overseas would want to meet a member of the opposition from a tiny country barely visible in the South Pacific? I'll help you out. Nobody.

Carter's own justification for all this? Well he doesn't have one but bleats that people are picking on him because he is gay. Bollocks. I couldn't give rat's arse if you have a strong affection for root vegetables. People are getting on your back because you are a greedy pig who thinks nothing of nicking my money in bulk quantities so you and your wife can ponce your way around the world.

Two things. You will stop doing it forthwith and you will pay back any money that is judged to have been unnecessary spending over the last, say, ten years. We'll have some one reasonable to make calls on this. Me.

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